Of all the wearables to be coming out this year, one of the most compelling, perhaps more so for gamers, is the Nabu Smartband coming from well-known gaming peripherals company Razer. Normally we see products like gaming mice and keyboards, gaming mouse pads, gaming headphones and all kinds of other gaming peripherals coming from Razer, even Razer clothing swag. One area they have chosen to step up and forge a path forward into this year is wearables, with their first entry into the market being the Razer Nabu Smartband. They showed off and unveiled it to the world back in January at CES, and wow was it impressive. This might be simply because I myself am a huge gamer, but something about it just screams “must have”.
Like other wearables that it will be competing against, it has a small lcd display to show you any of the information about notifications that come through, and has some cool features like shaking your wrist to dismiss a notification. While the Razer Nabu has yet to reach commercial availability, it should be out before the end of the summer. They are currently working with the first round of the beta testers before they put it out in an official launch state, with beta testers having been picked sometime last week. What might be one of the coolest features of the Nabu though is not any of the stuff we see from other wearables like notifications or step counters or anything like that, but the possibility that users may be able to exchange information with other Nabu wearers simply by high fiving eachother.
If this becomes a feature Razer seems to be using the WeChat platform integration to allow this to happen, a chat platform that currently lets users exchange information details via Bluetooth. Let’s be honest though, sending contact info over Bluetooth the traditional way just isn’t cool enough, I mean… it’s 2014, and a high five is way better. Right now that feature is currently being researched, so it’s still unclear if Razer will actually end up implementing it or not. It’s also rumored that the Nabu Smartband will most likely end up at somewhere under $100 for the pricetag, which should make it very appealing to those who are looking for a smart connected wearable but don’t want a full fledged smartwatch. If you want to be prepared for when the Nabu hits store shelves, you can download the Razer Nabu Utility companion app from the Play Store.